


In My Restless Dreams

by thedevilchicken



Category: Death Stranding RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-10
Updated: 2017-05-10
Packaged: 2018-10-30 11:11:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10875558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken
Summary: Hideo remembers his dreams.





	In My Restless Dreams

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rosecake](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosecake/gifts).



Hideo remembers his dreams. 

He's not sure if that's unusual or not because he doesn't really discuss them at all. He's never Googled dreaming; he's never read any blog posts or scientific journal articles or looked it up on Wikipedia because everyone knows Wikipedia is totally dependable. He's never hunted down books in a library or leafed through the appropriate pages of an encyclopedia offline any more than he has online. He doesn't talk about it at the office - he didn't back when he was still at Konami and he doesn't now. He doesn't even tweet about it though he guesses his tweets aren't _really_ personal even when they kind of are and besides, he strongly suspects that if he did tweet about it, it would tumble downhill into Freud and Jung and all of that stuff - stuff that's fascinating to him but makes no more sense than his dreams themselves - at a totally alarming rate. He doesn't want to have his subconscious psychoanalysed, at least not by his colleagues or his employees or total strangers on the internet, and he's definitely not going to go see a professional when honestly, it's all just part of who he is. It always has been. So, he doesn't talk about it.

Hideo remembers his dreams. It's not that he doesn't forget some of them eventually because he's sure he's shuffled off a few of the more boring ones, but the point is he always remembers them when he wakes up. He dreams about the sea, about boats and fish and waves and beaches, the wind off the water and the salt on his skin. He dreams about the places he grew up and all the things he used to want that gave way to the things that he now has, though they're not really very different. He dreams about the places he's been to and the people he's met and usually, for the most part, it's all very mundane; he's on a plane or he's playing a game or he's reading a book or he's watching a movie and when he dreams like that, Freud might even call him normal. But the thing is, he was right: he was telling the truth when he said that horror gives him nightmares. When _Silent Hills_ was still in production, or at least when P.T. was and he's not sure what he thinks about all of that even now, he had nightmares every night for months because of the work they were doing and the things he had to think about, the things that he plunged himself into. Now, it's happening again. 

_Death Stranding_ was never intended to be a horror game. Hideo supposes technically it still isn't - honestly, it's hard to explain exactly what it is, but horror was never the intent. Of course, things have a way of creeping in around the edges. Things have a way of getting in under your skin. Ideas are like that. They stick with him.

Sometimes when he dreams, he's in the game, and that makes sense because that's what he thinks about all day long at work. Sometimes he's on the beach with Norman or maybe he _is_ Norman, complete with his tattoos and the scar over his stomach that means something he's been dancing around in interviews for months like the mystery's as much a part of the game as the trailers are, and when he looks at his hands, they're not his, either. He can feel the breeze on his skin and the sand under his feet, between his toes, and he can barely smell the salt of the sea for everything that's dead and rotting on the beach there all around him. It turns his stomach but it's not just the smell; in his dream, everything just feels so utterly wrong that it makes him sick. 

Sometimes when he dreams, he's in the city with Guillermo or maybe this time he _is_ Guillermo. He can feel the rumble in the ground and in the bricks at his back as the tank crosses the bridge. The scream of the jet engines overhead rings in his ears so loud it makes him cringe and he can see the ripples it all makes in the oily black not-water at his feet. Sometimes that's where it ends, with him huddling scared by the side of the bridge because he knows exactly what comes next and he knows he can't avoid it no matter what he does because how could he? The story's already written, after all. But then sometimes that's _not_ the end. Sometimes the dream goes on and he meets Mads except it's not Mads, not really, the resemblance is only just skin deep. 

And then, when his heart is almost pounding straight out of his chest, that's when he wakes. 

There are other dreams, about the game and not. Sometimes, he dreams he's being chased and sometimes he knows what it is that's chasing him and sometimes he doesn't and honestly, he thinks not knowing might actually be worse. Sometimes, he dreams he's under water and he's running out of breath with every passing instant and he knows what will happen when he can't help but breathe in. Then other times, the better times, the rarest times, it's not a nightmare at all, except sometimes he thinks the nightmares are easier to accept. Those are the times that waking up is hardest. 

Hideo remembers his dreams, which means he remembers his nightmares, too. He doesn't discuss his dreams, which means he doesn't discuss his nightmares, either. 

Except, he supposes, for when he does. 

\---

Usually, when he wakes from dreaming, Hideo takes a moment to steady himself and then he does some work. He finds work is the best remedy for most conditions, unless he just physically can't get out of bed. 

He goes into his study if he's at home at the time, so he won't wake anyone else in the house, or he goes to work and he sits at his desk in his office, at the computer that's usually turned on even if he's not actually logged in. Maybe he'll rearrange a few things on the desk while he thinks, pens or his keyboard or the place he's put his phone or the little Hannibal figures that seemed to take forever to arrive but he's still glad he ordered them. He guesses they remind him of Mads more than they remind him of Hannibal, really, though he knows all the sharp knives and the near-infinite designer suits aren't really him, even if he manages to look at home in them - that's acting for you. Mads is more of a jeans and a t-shirt (and maybe a hoodie if it's cold outside) kind of person, like Hideo is, though he doubts Mads has ever felt the urge to go into the office at 4am.

If he's not at home, because these days he's frequently not at home, he'll turn on the TV just for the background noise and he'll work at the dining table if it's big enough, at the desk if there is one, sitting on a cushion on the floor with his papers spread out all over the carpet or cross-legged on the bed with his laptop sitting on a hardback book or a clipboard or whatever he has with him so it doesn't overheat against the mattress and die for a painful half hour before he dares turn it back on again. Sometimes there's a movie on the television and sometimes he stops working to watch it, or he watches while he works, even if it's French or it's Spanish or it's Czech and even the subtitles make no sense to him, because sometimes it's fun to make up the story of it in his head or just watch and appreciate the style of it, the way it looks. Once upon a time, he wanted to be a director, and it's not as if his love of cinema ever went away - sometimes just the aesthetic of it's enough to keep his attention till the end. Or sometimes it's one he's seen before and sometimes it's in Japanese, or it's English and he can follow along with the dialog, at least roughly, if he concentrates. He saw a lot of movies growing up; even when he's travelling, he likes to make time for at least one per day. Sometimes, he thinks, tradition is just as important as innovation is.

Once or twice, he's stumbled over one of Mads's movies. He's seen most of them, some of them more than once, like _Valhalla Rising_ and he's spoken to Nicolas more than once about that one, once while it was still playing on his laptop and it was kind of like a DVD director's commentary except live over the telephone. He's dreamed something like it a few times over the years, except he'd maybe call it darker, with blood in the dirt and on his skin and in his hair and Mads is there because of course Mads is there except usually he's One Eye though once, _once_ , One Eye turned to him and blinked both his eyes open instead of just one and when he looked at him he was Mads again. He said Hideo's name and the way he looked at him, even covered in dirt and blood the way he was, it reminded him of somewhere else and something else completely, another time that he's tried not to let himself think about too often. But when Mads wrapped one hand around Hideo's wrist, his fingers warm and firm and almost seeming real, he woke. 

That was the first time in months that it hadn't been a nightmare. He lay there in the dark in his Paris hotel room and he remembered the dream, the the warmth of Mads's hand, how big he seemed next to him even without his shirt, stripped to the waist. He fumbled for the switch by the bed and turned the light on. He reached for his phone without even thinking.

He dialled the number without his glasses on, or rather he hit the button in his contacts list to call the number because frankly he can barely even remember his own phone number, let alone anyone else's, let alone dial them without his glasses. He remembers times when cellphones didn't really exist, remembers programming his top five most frequently used numbers into speed dial on his landline when that was still a novelty, phone books and the time he got his first answerphone, what his message said before the beep, but then his call didn't go through to voicemail like he'd almost expected it to. There was a crackle and a rustle and someone cleared their throat and Hideo supposes he's heard stranger things as people's voicemail messages over the years, but it wasn't voicemail picking up. 

"Det er Mads," Mads said, sounding half asleep, and that was the exact moment that Hideo realized he had no idea why he'd called or what he'd thought he was going to say and even if he had known, he wasn't convinced he'd have been able to say it to him in English, never mind Danish. Nicolas tried to teach him a few words once but they never really got past the _hej_ stage and frankly Hideo didn't even know what time it might have been right then in Copenhagen, if they were in the same time zone then or different ones, or even if Mads was _in_ Copenhagen, if he was in Denmark at all or somewhere, _anywhere_ else. He could have been fast asleep in Tokyo when Hideo called from Europe and he wouldn't have known. 

"Det er Mads," Mads said again, louder, a bit less like he'd just woken up though Hideo almost cringed to think he had. "Hej?" He paused. " _Hej_?"

Hideo took a breath, half convinced he was going to sound like he'd called him in the middle of the night to breathe heavily down the phone like some kind of total pervert. 

"Mads-san," he said, not sounding terribly steady about it. 

"Hideo?"

"Hai."

"Was that _hai_ or _hi_ or _hej_?" Mads said, in English, or at least mostly. 

"Hai," Hideo repeated, though that didn't exactly clear things up. 

"Oh." 

They paused again. Mads said something Hideo didn't understand and it was totally ridiculous, he had no idea what he was doing, so he muttered _gomen nasai, honto ni gomen nasai!_ like he expected Mads to understand that and then ended the call as quickly as he could. He turned off the light in a haze of hot embarrassment and he lay down in bed and he tried to pretend he wasn't thinking about what Mads must have thought of him. Except that was exactly what he was thinking as he stared into the not quite total dark of the hotel room with the corridor light under the door playing tricks on his eyes and he wasn't entirely sure if it was worse to believe Mads was somewhere in the world thinking what an idiot Kojima Hideo must be or that maybe he'd dismissed it completely and gone back to sleep already. After all, Mads thinking maybe Hideo had lost his mind would mean he was _thinking about him_ , at the very least. It was an embarrassment unto itself but he liked the idea of being a thought in Mads's head. 

It might not have been too bad if it had stopped there, but it didn't. Hideo called him again three nights later and then hung up immediately at the sound of Mads's voice on the line, feeling like the worst stalker in the world. He called him again two nights after that and when Mads said _Hideo?_ he said _hai_ and then they sat in silence for three whole minutes, breathing, the sound of a television in the background on both ends of the line but in different languages just the way they were themselves. They sat there in silence for three minutes before Hideo said a very quick _oyasumi nasai, Mads-san_ , so quick he was tripping over his tongue, and he ended the call just like that. 

He called him again four nights after that, back in Tokyo after his business trip that had admittedly felt like mostly pleasure, and when Mads answered, Hideo guessed it must still have been daytime in Europe. Hideo said something in Japanese and Mads replied _I don't understand_ , in English so maybe Hideo would understand he didn't understand, and they paused, Hideo feeling like a total idiot because really, what was he doing? He sighed. He closed his eyes, rubbed them underneath his glasses with his free hand, but the light in his office was far too bright for his lids to block it out completely.

"I don't understand," Mads repeated. "But I don't mind if you want to talk."

Hideo frowned. He waited, wondering if maybe he'd misinterpreted. 

"I don't mind if I don't understand," Mads said. "I'll just listen." Apparently he hadn't misinterpreted at all.

So, after a moment's pause, he talked. It wasn't long that first time, just a few minutes where he leaned back in his desk chair and he told him about the dream, in Japanese, even though he knew he didn't understand, or maybe it was because he didn't. Then he said _thank you, Mads-san_ , switching into English, and Mads said _you're welcome, Hideo_ and Hideo ended the call. It felt strange, but somehow oddly cathartic.

The next time, it lasted longer. He called and Mads picked up and Hideo talked, lying flat on his back on a couch in the corner of his office behind all the shelves of collectibles he liked to keep there, that he remembered Mads examining piece by piece when he'd visited. He had his glasses off and his other arm barred over his eyes. That was it was easier to pretend they weren't on separate continents.

The time after that, it was longer. The time after that, it was longer still. There were times after that when Hideo talked for thirty minutes, forty, maybe an hour, and Mads was there on the end of the line, listening - he knew he was even if they didn't actually exchange more than a few short sentences, all in a language that wasn't native to either of them. Hideo called from his study or from his office or from his hotel rooms dotted around the world, caught Mads sleeping or doing other things and sometimes he said he was driving and he put him on speaker and sometimes he said he was out buying groceries or he was trying on a suit or he was at a costume fitting, he drinking beer in a bar or he was in a hotel room, watching television, killing time before or after an interview. Sometimes, Hideo was sure he'd woken him up again, but Mads never seemed to mind. Maybe he'd have minded more if he'd know that after the call ended, sometimes the only thing Hideo could focus on as he tried to sleep again was him. Maybe he'd have minded more if he'd known where Hideo's hands sometimes strayed to once their conversations were done, with him still in his head.

Once, he said he was answering his phone in the bathtub; Hideo tried not to imagine that, Mads lounging chest-deep in hot water, naked under the bright bathroom lights, and that was what he talked about then instead of that night's dream. He talked about knowing the texture of his skin from all the scans they'd taken, how he could probably add effects to make the shot look like water on skin but how it wouldn't be the same as seeing him like that, in the flesh, in person. He talked about another time, with brighter lights, with whiter walls, how the computer models were good but they still weren't quite the same. He'd tried to forget those times in the white rooms, and he'd failed spectacularly. He remembered.

"Mads-san?" he said, after a pause, sitting alone that night in a hotel room somewhere in New York. 

"Yes?" Mads replied. 

"Do you remember?" 

Mads took a second. He took more than a second, maybe more like twenty though it felt a lot longer than that to Hideo with the way his pulse thudded hard in his veins. It was the question he'd wanted to ask since the start, since the very first call. Maybe that was why he'd picked up the phone in the first place.

"Yes," Mads said. "I remember. I don't think I'll forget."

Hideo didn't have to ask if he knew what he meant.

\---

They met in person for the first time at Comic Con in San Diego, and Hideo has the photographs to prove it. They're all over Twitter, and he's grinning in all of them.

The way he remembers it, they only had about forty minutes over mediocre sushi that really only made him feel slightly homesick before they both had somewhere else to be, another engagement to make, so they said their goodbyes and they moved along. He'd wanted to meet Mads for years by then, ever since he'd seen him on the screen that first time in _Casino Royale_ in those suits with that eye and that accented English he'd barely been able to follow back then, and he remembers frowning to himself as they both left for their next meetings, not sure if he was thrilled or disappointed or a percentage of both; it wasn't quite a mixture, though, more like layers of each because he worked through _thrilled_ during a Q &A to arrive at _disappointed_ in the middle of an interview and then punched through into a whole new stratum of _thrilled_ again by the time he got back to the hotel that night. 

Either way, thrilled or disappointed, Mads signed the cover of a DVD for him before he left that he'd brought with him from home just for the occasion, a Japanese version of _Jagten_ that he still has on the shelves in his office. Hideo definitely got something concrete out of the meeting, at least, and when he looked back on it that night in the hotel, when he looked back on it a week later, a week after that, remembering shaking Mads's hand, how his voice sounded the same as it did in his movies but closer, more intimate, more real somehow, how he was everything that their mutual friend Nicolas had said he was except maybe more on top of that...well, _thrilled_ absolutely won out. He was only sorry that the meeting couldn't have lasted longer. 

They met again the month after that, in England then instead of the United States, in a city whose name he can't quite remember that it took him hours to get to. Still, at the very least, he does remember what they did there. He's really unlikely to forget.

They went straight into the studio after they'd arrived, the time rented from a local university; Mads met him and the crew there, where they did the preliminary 3D scanning with the university staff showing them the ropes, explaining procedures, all the right buttons to press and settings to tweak, and the translator they'd hired did an excellent job considering the technical content. Mads seemed a bit perplexed by it all but he was clearly a professional and followed all instructions given to the letter, turning this way and that, holding still when they told him, and Hideo explained that for this part, at least, movement was something he needed to keep to a minimum - he told him to think about it like a photoshoot because he knew he'd done more than a couple of those, except there were more than fifty times the usual number of cameras in the room all around him and the cameraman was really a desktop PC. Mads seemed to get the idea from that. They made a good start. Hideo remembers being pleased, even if they'd barely had a chance to speak by then. 

When they wound up work for the day, they went out afterwards. Mads stopped in the street outside to ask a couple of passersby where the nearest sports bar was and when they got there it turned out Mads wanted to watch a handball match, something to do with the Olympics that were going on in Brazil, Denmark playing France, and Hideo can honestly say he didn't have a single clue what was going on on the television the entire time but Mads's enthusiasm as the match moved on was completely infectious. The noise they all made when the match was over and Denmark won, you'd have thought the bar was full of Danes, not Brits. Mads is always kind of like that. It's something Hideo admires.

They took photos there in the bar that Hideo didn't post online until months later because back then Mads's involvement in the game still hadn't been made public. They had dinner with a few of the other guys from the team and then they played a terrible game of pool, just the two of them, both of them consistently missing shots with the borrowed cues while people occasionally interrupted to ask for Mads's autograph. He took it in stride over his tall glass of beer and Hideo tried not to watch too closely as he swallowed but then Mads looked at him, over the rim of his beer glass. Mads caught him watching. Mads _smiled_ , faintly, just enough for Hideo to know for sure it was a smile and not something else, and he put down his beer glass and he bent down low over the pool table, deliberately, cue in hand. Hideo's eyes widened behind his glasses as he watched him. He stopped pretending he wasn't watching. Mads really didn't seem to mind. Hideo guessed maybe he was just used to it; maybe that was how it was for actors.

And after, they went back to the hotel. Hideo turned on the television and he sent a few emails from his phone hooked up to the free wifi and he glanced at the TV screen every once in a while, through the news, through the first forty minutes of _Aliens_ though he'd definitely seen it more than once before. Then he turned it off and he went to sleep, or at the very least he tried to - he lay in bed awake, remembering how Mads's hoodie had ridden up as he leaned over the pool table, the line of his back as he stretched, his jeans pulled tight in places he knew he should've known better than to look. He lay awake in bed and tried to think of something else when he touched himself underneath the sheets, but he failed at that miserably. He was thinking about Mads. This time he didn't have to ask himself if he was more thrilled or disappointed; he wasn't disappointed at all.

They did more work the following day, playing with setups and lighting and camera resolutions, the techs on hand going through it all with Hideo and his team as Mads stood there in the midst of all the cameras and stretched between scans. He had the uniform on that Hideo had picked out for the game with a helmet and a model gun and somehow, even in the middle of a cage made entirely of camera equipment, he still managed to look the part. It didn't really surprise Hideo, though - he'd been calling Mads his favorite actor for a reason, after all, and it wasn't for those moments they took a break and Mads slipped outside and Hideo went with him, not just to watch him smoke a cigarette but he definitely didn't mind watching. He watched Mads's mouth, he watched his hands, his fingers, things they'd caught in the scan but not like that. He watched him closely, while they worked and then at dinner and after, as they walked back to the hotel with the others. And when he went to bed, he was thinking about Mads's hands when he touched himself. If he were being totally honest, he might say he touched himself because he was thinking about Mads's hands and not the other way around. 

The next day was the same again - scanning in the bright white camera suite, takeout lunch and restaurant dinner, Mads making jokes via the translator that apparently gained something in translation that made them all laugh so hard Mads looked completely bemused and all Hideo could think was how lucky he was that he'd hired him for the game. It was different than it was with Norman, though, even though he really enjoyed Norman's work, and he guessed he knew why - Mads has a different kind of presence to him, quieter, surer, stronger, and aside from that, Norman had never looked at him the way Mads did sometimes before he turned a certain way or made a certain gesture that made him take closer notice. Mads knows how to move for maximum effect. The way he moved, it was almost flirtation. The way he moved, Hideo couldn't help but notice. When he touched himself in bed that night, under starchy hotel sheets, he had to wonder if he'd been doing it on purpose. Even if he hadn't, Hideo couldn't take his eyes off him.

When he woke in the morning, he didn't know what he was going to do that day. It wasn't planned. It was 100% a whim. 

They did the rest of the scanning they needed that morning, grabbed food in an adjoining room and then afterwards, that was when Hideo knew what he was going to do. It was his birthday and as he told the rest of the staff they could take off early, do some shopping, have drinks, see a movie, sleep, whatever they might want to do. So they left. They left Mads and Hideo alone, because he said there was some work he wanted to do. Hideo prefers to do as much of the work himself as he can, if he can. He's limited in some ways and he freely acknowledges that - he's not a coder, even if his skull with computers is above the general average, and art is really best left to Shin-chan - but in other ways he'd like to think he makes up for that. He has drive and he has vision and ambition and when he asked all the others to leave, no one questioned it because they know he likes to do the work himself. 

The door of the suite closed and Mads looked at him from the black pad on the bright white floor where he was meant to stand and had been standing for the last four days, on and off. Mads watched him walk across the room from the door he'd just closed to the computers on the desk. Hideo remembers the exact look Mads had because he's seen it more than once on him, more than twice, though he guesses not much more than that because what they have now is phone calls in the middle of the night. Mads watched him tap at the keyboard and then Hideo turned to him, the desk chair turning with him. 

"Please, take off the..." Hideo said, tapping his head with his forefinger. He felt excited as he spoken, anxious but excited, even if it was his fifty-third birthday and he guessed he should have known better.

"Helmet?" Mads supplied, and Hideo nodded, so Mads unfastened the chin strap, took it off with both hands and held it out through the gap in the camera-lined cage. Hideo went over and took it and set it aside and Mads ran his fingers through his hair, raked it back then patted it down and then folded his hands in front of him. 

"Please, take off the..." Hideo said, gesturing up and down his torso, around his waist, miming the next piece of military equipment. 

"Honestly, I don't know what this is either," Mads admitted with a smile, though he clearly got the idea because he unfastened the clips across his chest and at his waist, and he shrugged the contraption off and held it out. Hideo took it. He set it aside, too. 

They stood there for a moment, because they both knew they had scans of Mads both with and without the helmet, with and without the pack, with the gun and without it. They looked at each other, Hideo picking up a bottle of water from the desk and unscrewing the cap though that was more about trying to seem nonchalant somehow than it was about wanting to drink. Then again, his mouth did start to dry out quite quickly when Mads unzipped the front of the jacket and pulled it off without being asked to, his eyes on Hideo all the time. He was wearing a t-shirt underneath, sand-colored like the uniform and fitted but not quite clingy, and Hideo knew Mads knew they had scans of him in that, too. They'd built up quite the library of scans of Mads's figure and different outfits for them to work with later, just in case any of them were needed.

Mads reached out, past the cameras, nodded at the bottle in Hideo's hands and he gave it to him; he watched him take a drink, his Adam's apple bobbing with it, then he handed it back and Hideo drank after him, feeling himself blush. Mads rubbed at the not-quite-beard over his chin and then he pulled up the hem of the t-shirt he was wearing and he took it off and Hideo watched him watch him do it. Mads handed him the t-shirt. Hideo took it, and he went to the computer, and he scanned him again, bare chest and all, like new data was all he was looking for. In a way, he supposed it was. 

He really should have stopped there. To be completely honest, he knew he shouldn't even have started, but after the start the most reasonable place to stop would have been right there. But once the scans were done, Mads stooped and he untied his bootlaces. He toed off his boots and he picked them up and handed them to Hideo, brows raised, and Hideo just took them and set them aside with all the rest of the outfit so far because he wasn't totally sure what else he could do - he was the one who'd started this, after all. Then Mads unbuckled his belt. He pushed down the camouflage pants, over his thighs, past his knees, pulled them off and handed them to Hideo, too, the belt buckle clattering against a camera and they both winced momentarily only to find they hadn't damaged anything Kojima Productions would have had to replace. And then they scanned again, getting the detail of Mads's chest and his back and his thighs and the texture of the hairs on his legs, his forearms, veins and the lines of muscle under skin, as much detail as they could. Hideo glanced at the screen, the files he'd just created populating a folder, yet more data, and when it was done, he turned back to Mads.

He wanted to tell him they were done for the day and maybe they should go out to eat or they should watch a movie in his room and he'd give explaining the game's plot one last go, or at least he wanted to want to do that. All he actually did was look at him, sitting there on the desk chair wiping his palms on the thighs of his jeans, and Mads didn't even look the slightest bit hesitant as he took off his socks, balancing on one leg then the other with not quite surprising dexterity, and tossed them out past the cameras. He didn't look hesitant as he pushed down his boxer shorts and threw them out, too, leaving himself stripped right down to his skin and his tan lines. Hideo almost spat a mouthful of Highland Spring out of the bottle all over himself. Maybe he'd thought about it, in bed at night, but he hadn't for a second thought he'd end up doing this. He'd really only meant it as a fantasy.

He definitely shouldn't have scanned him naked and he knew that, they both had to know that, but he did it anyway. He pressed the button on the monitor with a swift click of the mouse before he could change his mind and he watched him, felt his cheeks burning as his eyes moved over him, head to toe, maybe lingering here and there at the hollow at the base of Mads's throat, his collarbones, his thighs, the length of his cock that made something in him pull tight with nervous excitement. He definitely shouldn't have scanned him naked because what would have happened if someone else had gotten hold of the files? But he did it, because Mads didn't seem to mind. Mads hadn't seemed to mind the attention he'd paid him at all.

"Have we finished?" Mads asked, when the last scan was done, and Hideo looked at him, trying to decide if that was the leading question it sounded like, if he was referring to the scans or to the vague idea of there being more to the scenario. Maybe it really was a leading question and maybe he could have said no, they weren't finished, and Mads might have wanted that, or at the very least not minded the idea. But Hideo couldn't do it. He'd already gone too far. He screwed the cap back onto the water bottle and he nodded his head. 

"I think yes," he said, shutting down the thing he knew he'd started, and Mads shrugged, still smiling faintly, and from the look on his face Hideo couldn't tell if he was relieved or disappointed. And he dressed while Hideo shifted the files around on the computer, shunted them onto a BitLocked external drive though that took a while and Mads just hung around once he was dressed, leaning on the edge of the desk back in his jeans and hoodie, just a bit too close for comfort. There was no reason for him to stand so close, and there was no way for Hideo to unsee what he'd just seen. And then, when the file transfer was complete, they left. 

They had dinner with the rest of the team and there was a birthday cake that Mads gave to him though Hideo supposes it came from everyone involved in the project, and they drank, Mads sipping beer straight from the bottle and toying with the label as he talked with their hired translator while everyone else chatted round the table in speedy, half-drunk Japanese. Hideo glanced at him every now and then. More than once, Mads glanced back, like there was something he wanted, like there was something he needed to say. Whatever it might have been, he didn't say it. They all went back to their rooms and Hideo tried to sleep, but knowing he was three doors down the corridor from Mads didn't help. Knowing Mads was three doors down made it almost impossible. He was thinking about him, about knocking on his door, about how he'd look if he answered, about being invited inside. He was thinking about his hands and his hair and his thighs and his cock and if Mads had somehow believed what he'd done was all strictly professional and if he'd be surprised if touched him. He didn't leave the room. He touched himself instead.

And then, the next day, they went their separate ways. They didn't meet again until January. 

\---

It can feel like a lot has changed in five months but between August and January it didn't particularly feel that way to Hideo. 

He'd been working, though that was hardly surprising given his approach to his work, and time has somehow always tended to fly where he's concerned - he's not sure how he's fifty-three years old but he's got there more or less in the blink of an eye, and those five months didn't seem like long to him at all, except at night. He was already dreaming the game by then, though all they'd really managed to show to anyone at that point was Norman and not Mads. 

Of course, time having passed so quickly didn't mean that he hadn't looked forward to it. It didn't mean he hadn't planned for it, or that he didn't feel any kind of excitement or maybe trepidation and it absolutely wasn't like he'd spent his nights, after he woke up from dreaming, piecing together a 3D model of Mads based on the scans they'd taken in the UK, except maybe that was exactly what it was like. He planned. He was excited. He was maybe sort of worried, but then Mads was there and Mads seemed happy to have arrived and everything seemed to go to plan. Maybe he didn't have to concern himself with that last afternoon in England after all. 

He showed Mads the offices; Hideo's still quite proud of the place, how they structured it, desks, glass-walled executive offices, a creative space for them all to work in. He watched Mads ooh and aah over Ludens in the entrance hall. He took him to meet Shin-chan who drew for him because that's what Shin-chan's good at; he watched Mads say hello to every employee they met in any part of the building. Then they went out for lunch and Mads put on the green happi coat when the hostess handed it to him and they ate sushi on the yakatabune on the river over cups of sake instead of the beer Mads usually liked, talking in halting sentences but that didn't seem to matter very much because they could get their point across in the end, even if it took some time. 

They went back to the office after that and he watched Mads pick up every action figure from his display case, pull out every DVD and check the cover to see if it was one he knew but couldn't make out from the Japanese title, and leaf through every book he had. Mads seemed amused by the little Hannibal figures on Hideo's desk, the ones Hideo had wondered about putting away for the duration of Mads's visit but in the end he'd supposed they were all over Twitter anyway. He guesses it was never much of a secret that he's a fan.

Mads picked one of the figures up and held it up next to himself. 

"Does it look like me?" he asked, half-smiling in a way that didn't look at all like Hannibal. 

Hideo nodded, still not sure he could believe Mads was really there, in person. The figures have reminded him more of Mads than Hannibal ever since. 

They did no work that first day. They all went out for dinner and then Mads went back to his hotel and Hideo went home and he dreamed and it was Mads that night, uncomfortably it was Mads, back in England, taking off his clothes in front of him the way he had. It was the same the next night, after a day of scanning, Mads in a motion capture suit in the studio that they'd set up to be a lot like VASG in San Diego, technicians scuttling around him, fussing, pulling the suit into better alignment, adjusting cameras, adjusting lights. Hideo just sat back and watched, which he guessed was a perk of the job, seeing Mads move, seeing him act with his whole body the way he did. And there was lunch in the office kitchen and dinner out of the office, in a restaurant just down the street, and then Mads went back to the hotel and Hideo went home and when he dreamed, he dreamed about Mads. When he woke, he knew what he was going to do. Maybe he didn't know the specifics, but he knew he was going to do _something_.

The next day, they were back in the studio. They spent the morning in the suite, technicians littering Mads's face with green dots of paint that the motion capture would focus on, Mads already stripped out of his shirt to his undershirt, his hair pulled back so nothing would get in the way of the cameras' view of his face. They recorded his expressions, every twitch of a muscle, the movement of his eyes, his mouth, and Hideo watched him, watched the cameras tracking those green dots, and he knew what he was going to do, make or break. 

After lunch, he sent everyone else away just like he'd done in England. And when the two of them returned to the suite and the door closed behind them, Mads gave him a look, a _knowing_ look, as he stepped back into the ring of cameras. Hideo went over to him. He brought the green paint applicator with him, with its circular tip and its sticky bright green pigment. 

"Please, take off your shirt," Hideo said, motioning to the undershirt. 

Mads complied; he pulled the shirt off over his head and he tossed it away onto the floor, past the cameras. And Hideo, slowly, meticulously, stepped in to apply symmetrical dots at regular intervals across Mads's collarbones. He applied them to his neck and his shoulders and his sternum, walked his fingertips down the centre of Mads's chest to help space the dots out evenly and followed down to his navel. Then he stepped behind him, covered his back in the appropriate dots, following muscles, bone, right from the nape of Mads's neck to the small of his back. He knew the motion capture couldn't work well like this, on a full body instead of just a face, but at that particular moment, his fingertips on Mads's skin, he didn't really care. 

"Please, take off your..." Hideo said, when he was done, and he reached out and tapped the buckle of Mads's belt. So Mads unbuckled it and he unzipped his fly and then he paused to toe off his sneakers before he stripped off his pants and socks. Hideo nudged them aside with the outside of one foot, nudged them just outside of camera shot, then he went down on his knees on the floor and dotted the lines of Mads's thighs, the tendons in his feet, his kneecaps, the achilles that stretched down taut just behind both ankles. He took his time. He did it exactly the way he wanted it. Mads stood still; Hideo didn't look up to see if he was watching.

He didn't have to ask for the next step when he was finished; Mads took off his boxer shorts without any kind of prompting. Hideo dotted Mads's abdomen, still down on the floor on his knees. Hideo dotted Mads's hips and his navel then stood and moved around him, pressed one dot over his coccyx, a number of them over his backside, and then he pressed a line of four down the length of Mads's cock. He took a breath to steady himself and he nudged it out of his way with his fingertip, to press two green dots to his balls just behind. By the time he was done, his cheeks were on fire. By the time he'd set the cameras running, the paint was dry on Mads's skin. And Mads moved then, turned his head this way and that, stretched his arms above his head, stretched himself tall as he looked at Hideo. He flexed his muscles, turned, moved for the cameras. Then he ran one hand down, careful, the dots on his skin like a slalom course for his fingers. He wrapped his hand around his cock and while the cameras were running, while Hideo's eyes were on him round as saucers, he stroked himself. He went down on his knees, sat back on his heels on the floor and stroked himself, toying with the slit in the tip, squeezing his balls and making his head tilt back with it as he took a steadying breath that didn't help at all. All Hideo could do was watch. And maybe the dots blurred just like the lines between them had been from the start, but that didn't seem to matter. 

The equipment recorded every second of it, the way Mads's muscles shifted, the movement of his hands, his face as he took a sharp breath just the moment before he came on the floor there right in front of him. Hideo's played it more than one or two times since, but that doesn't mean he doesn't remember. Real life was better than the simulation is. He'd like to narrow the gap someday; maybe Mads will agree to be his beta tester. 

And then, Mads put on his clothes and he left for the hotel. Hideo encrypted the files and then he went home. But that night, when he woke from a dream of Mads, he didn't go into his study. He didn't go back to the office. He went to the hotel where Mads was staying and he made his way to the door. He knocked. He waited. Forty seconds later, Mads answered; his hair was tousled and Hideo thought maybe he'd woken him up and he looked at him for a moment, like he was wondering what he was doing there at 2am, like he was weighing his options. Then he stood aside. He didn't say a word, he just let him come in and he closed the door behind him.

Hideo didn't know what to expect. He didn't know quite why he'd gone there in the first place, were he honest with himself, so he had no idea what to expect when he got there because he hadn't even been sure that Mads would let him in. But what happened was Mads took off the underwear he'd been sleeping in and there were still the faintest traces of the green dots in places on Mads's skin that he rubbed at idly was he looked at him, questioning, almost challenging. Then Mads came closer, Mads reached out and took off Hideo's glasses and he set them down on the desk nearby. His fingers caught the bottom hem of Hideo's shirt and he stepped in even closer. Hideo took the hint and he took off his shirt, tugged it over his head and tossed it onto the desk and then Mads touched him. Mads _touched_ him. Mads had his hands on him, warm and roving, and Hideo's pulse beat faster, so much faster it felt like his heart was capable of breaking its way out of his chest like something from _Alien_ , except more from the thrill of it than from xenomorphs. 

When Hideo undressed, Mads watched from the foot of the bed. When Hideo was naked, which seemed only fair under the circumstances, Mads beckoned him closer. Mads put his hands on Hideo's shoulders, thumbs brushing his collarbones. And Hideo touched him back, hesitantly at first, but then he very nearly couldn't get enough, and Mads let him, watching him do it. Mads watched him touch all of the places those green dots still were, just faintly, over his chest and his hips and down to the length of his cock. Hideo took him in his hand, already half breathless and half hard with the things they were doing. Hideo stroked him, felt him respond, felt stiffen in his hand. That was definitely something you couldn't do with a 3D scan. 

When they went to bed, Hideo pulled Mads down on top of him and Mads went willingly. Three minutes later, lube in all the right places and a few of the wrong ones, Mads edged the tip of his cock between Hideo's thighs and pushed himself up snug against Hideo's hole. He pushed himself inside him, slowly, inch by inch in slow shifts of his hips, making them both gasp in a breath, making Hideo curse in Japanese though the look on Mads's face said he understood a curse when he heard one in any language. Hideo couldn't remember the last time he'd done this, or even really wanted to until he'd met Mads face to face. Hideo believes in exceptions proving the rule. 

They moved together, stiff, hard, Hideo half convinced he was too old for all of this but wanting it anyway because he'd wanted it since before they'd ever met, Mads's eyes on him and his cock in him, the friction of it making him shiver. He held onto Mads's biceps and they moved together; he watched Mads's face, the way his hair fell forward, his curve of his mouth, all the things he'd been looking at on screens for weeks except they were different in person, or not different but _different_ , tangible, real. It was Mads inside him, moving in him, Mads whose body was holding him down to the mattress. Mads. Not a game. Not a dream.

When they came, Mads still inside him, Hideo's hands gripping so hard it could've bruised, breathless and shivering and pulling at each other, nothing in Hideo's life had ever felt as real.

"Stay," Mads said, after, so Hideo stayed. In the morning, Hideo scrubbed the remnants of green dots from Mads's skin under the shower. Later on, he put them all back again.

And when Mads left Japan, Hideo thought it was over. But that didn't mean he wanted it to be.

\---

Hideo remembers his dreams, but tonight it's not his dream that wakes him. Tonight, Hideo wakes when the phone rings. 

The phone rings and Hideo wakes and when he looks at the screen, there's a photo of Mads in a surprisingly well-fitting happi coat on a yakatabune in Tokyo that Hideo thinks he won't forget in a hurry, completely failing to pick things up with his chopsticks. Hideo remembers showing him how to use them though he had a feeling he'd already been shown more than once before, and maybe he hadn't really needed the demonstration, Hideo's hand on his, maybe he was just out of practice or didn't eat enough Japanese food to have needed to practice in the first place, though he seemed to enjoy it very much. Hideo rubs his eyes and he looks again and it's definitely Mads's photo, his name there on the screen, too, in English or Danish or at least the Latin alphabet and not like the katakana they wrote it in on the duct tape they stuck to the stool in the kitchen at the office where he sat for interviews in January. The tape's still there because every time he walks by, Hideo remembers how amused Mads was when they did it. 

But the phone rings and Hideo wakes and it's Mads on the screen when he looks at it.

"Moshi moshi," he says, when he finally stops staring and swipes to pick it up. 

"Hello, Hideo," Mads replies. He knows his voice very well. There's really no mistaking that it's definitely him.

Hideo frowns. Mads never calls because it's always Hideo that calls, once he's woken from a dream he wants to talk about; he's called Mads tens of times since his visit to Tokyo, from his cell phone, all over the world. He's told him all about his dreams, discussing them except it's never really a discussion considering how one-sided it's always been. He's told him about the nights he dreams the game. He's told him about the times he dreams Le Chiffre or One Eye or Hannibal, and sometimes they really are the characters and sometimes they're really Mads instead. He's told him what he remembers about the time he came to visit, about meals and interviews and work in the studio and everything else, talking in Hideo's office, that night in Mads's hotel room. He's told him everything, every time he's called. He holds nothing back. Sometimes he asks himself if he'd still talk like that if Mads could understand him; he's not sure what it says about him that the answer is yes. He knows the answer is yes because honestly, there's more English in their conversations these days than there ever was before. 

Mads never calls, but Mads has called. 

"I had a dream," Mads says. "You were there." 

Hideo remembers his dreams. He's not sure if that's unusual or not, except he thinks maybe Mads remembers his dreams, too. Maybe they've been having the same ones.

 _I had a dream_ , Mads said. 

"You can tell me about it," Hideo replies, so Mads does. He tells him everything, from start to finish. He tells him he dreamed they were in bed together. He tells him he dreamed he was inside him, like those three days in Tokyo, nights in Mads's hotel, moments they stole at the office though they both knew better. It makes him shiver, hearing those things in Mads's voice, knowing he wants them. He'll be back in Japan soon for more work. Hideo's been making plans again.

Hideo remembers his dreams, his nightmares, all the things he's done with Mads inside his own subconscious. He remembers his dreams, but these days he knows reality's better. 

Sometimes, the best part of a dream is waking from it.

**Author's Note:**

> Title unapologetically nabbed from _Silent Hill 2_!


End file.
